Orcas are unusually satisfying to color because the animal itself can stay almost entirely black and white while the water does the colorful work. In this set of 27 pages, the simplest designs are clean silhouettes for younger kids; the realistic and mandala-style sheets have much smaller areas and are better with colored pencils or fine-tip markers.
If you want the orca to stay recognizable, keep the large dark and light patches separate and put most of the extra color into the ocean. A pale turquoise surface fading into deeper blue gives even a simple page more depth. On the mandala designs, you can ignore realism and treat the internal pattern as its own color exercise.
Before you print
Open the full-size image, then print on A4 or Letter paper with “fit to page.” If you are using dark markers, color the lighter water first and save the black areas for last; it is easier to keep the white patches clean that way. For more underwater themes, see the octopus coloring pages and our mermaid pages.
27 orca coloring pages
One last tip: if a realistic orca starts to look too flat, add a little cool gray along the edge of the white patches rather than filling them completely. That keeps the markings bright while giving the body some shape.
